My dear brothers and sisters in Christ; we are a week and some days into Lent, and by this time on the second Sunday of Lent we might be asking ourselves, why is it that I am giving up so many things are so apparently good? Why am I abstaining from social media and films, why am I giving up chocolates and desserts, why have I stopped drinking alcohol, why fast? Why can’t I cheat, just a little?
To those of us who are asking this question, Our Lord, in the Gospel episode of the Transfiguration, gives us a clear answer. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (556) teaches us that “the Transfiguration gives us a foretaste of Christ's glorious coming, when he ‘will change our lowly body to be like his glorious body.’”
And he was transfigured before
them;
his face shone like the sun
and his clothes became white as light.
This is the prize for which we are competing during Lent my dear brothers and sisters, for a body that will be like His on the Day of Judgement when the dead are resurrected. For, as Our Lord promised:
Then the just will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. (Mt 13: 43)
To get there, we need to exercise as in the words of St. Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians (9: 24-27):
Run in such a way that you may win it. Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one. So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified.
This glorified body clearly comes with some costs, we have to punish ourselves, and this is why we do what we do during Lent. So that we may not be disqualified on the Last Day when “all causes of sin and all evildoers” will be thrown into the furnace of fire (Mt 13: 41-42). The Catechism of the Catholic Church also teaches us that “it is through many persecutions that we must enter the kingdom of God.”
Listen to the rhetoric of St. Augustine addressed to us through the person of St. Peter:
Peter did not yet understand this when he wanted to remain with Christ on the mountain. It has been reserved for you, Peter, but for after death. For now, Jesus says: "Go down to toil on earth, to serve on earth, to be scorned and crucified on earth. Life goes down to be killed; Bread goes down to suffer hunger; the Way goes down to be exhausted on his journey; the Spring goes down to suffer thirst; and you refuse to suffer?
Do we, my dear brothers and sisters, refuse to suffer during Lent? Do we wish to convert Lent to merely a period of comfortable abstinence? If so, then we now know that we are not doing enough. If Lent is the time for spiritual warfare, then it must also be the time for heightened spiritual exercise, and this exercise can only be done through physical exertion and physical pain. And St. Paul assures us in his letter to the Romans (8:18):
I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us
How does one make the pain that we suffer during these spiritual exercises count for our good and the rest of Holy Church? Very simply, when we feel the very real bite of hunger, or the pain of the mortification we have chosen, we repeat the words of St. Paul in his letter to the Colossians (1:24):
In my flesh I take up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His body, the Church.
To those of you who have taken up the Cross this Lent, through sacrifice and physical mortification, I direct the words from St. Paul in his letter to Timothy which we read today:
Beloved:
Bear your share of hardship for the gospel
with the strength that comes from God.
May Our Lord cause His Blessed Mother, and His saints, to pray for you and His angels minister to you through this Lent.
(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful at the parish of St. Catherine of Alexandria, Old Goa on 1 March 2025.)
(Image reference: Christ Carrying the Cross, Titian, 1560 c., Museo del Prado.)
